I am fortunate enough so far to get everything I set my mind to. I don’t want to sound arrogant – it just happens with actually quite a lot of hard work. Unfortunately, there was one thing that I was dreaming about since my childhood while others were dreaming of becoming astronauts, doctors or getting ponies for their birthdays. In my case, however, it was studying at the Greatest of the Greatest University of Cambridge.

There is an enormously sad story behind this as it was actually my biggest dream which meant everything to me and I even thought I wouldn’t be able to live without a degree from that place. There was also another reason for that – the love of my life (I thought so at that time) was studying there. He did Maths or whatever. Well, let’s start getting into some details.

For some reason, I only found out about the deadlines of the application when there were only 5 days left till submitting. I was panicking, didn’t go to school so I could write the best cover letter in the world. I mentioned a lot of stuff that was completely minor and irrelevant but I made it sound like a world changing thing. For example, I spent one hour helping organising an event at school and I managed to write 3 big and powerful sentences about it and even related it to my motivation to study Natural Sciences. I couldn’t sleep, I was asking “The love of my life” tons of questions (it was a good excuse to talk to him as he wasn’t exactly interested in me the way I wanted him to be…). After 100 hours of work (I honestly didn’t sleep or at least I wasn’t aware of sleeping) I have submitted that letter and went straight to bed.

My academic situation wasn’t that great to be honest, my average from all of my school subjects at that time was 90% which in my home country is very good but not extraordinary. Luckily I had other things in my resume to support that application so I wasn’t that worried. I am not sure how many of the readers went through that process but you must know that they send invitations to interviews to people over few days. Obviously, I got my invitation at the last day which caused me enormous stress, sleepless nights and anxiety. I knew I could get in but I thought that I may have written something crazy without having any sleep (I never read that letter after I submitted it and I will never do so). Anyhow, I got my invitation and went to celebrate that alone. It actually happened when I was on that trip to Iran which I described in my previous post.

After I received the invitation, I knew I will get in. I was sure. I already was celebrating getting into Cambridge. Well, unfortunately the situation was quite different in reality. It doesn’t just happen that you go to the interview and get what you want. And it wasn’t the case in this situation. Actually, I did amazingly in my academic interviews where I had to demonstrate my knowledge and analytical thinking. The thing that was wrong, however, was my creativity. Obviously, can’t blame myself for not getting an offer. So, the motivational interview went soooo bad that I couldn’t even describe it in words. I can just give some examples:

– “Why do you want to study at Cambridge?”
– “Because there are a lot of concerts happening in this town, especially at the university”.

– “Why do you want to study Natural Sciences?”

– “Because I want to become a composer in the future and I could use mathematical and physical algorithms and laws to create contemporary music.”

Well, I guess you have an idea why I didn’t really succeed. I don’t even have to write what happened when I got the rejection. I was crying for 24 hours and went to do some community work in animal shelter to forget this tragedy. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. I thought there was no other way in life besides graduating from Cambridge. You know what was the other thing I didn’t get? Obviously, that guy from Cambridge with whom I already had our wedding and graduation planned in that cute university town.

I don’t know why I managed to fail that interview but I think I didn’t lose that much. I would have probably gone crazy there or maybe I would be in academia right now. Who knows. It was a great experience to survive my dreams being crushed.

I have decided to start my blog with my favourite story that I usually tell people during a wine session (any drinking session that involves at least one person drinking wine – usually me). Nobody really believes it and thinks of it as a joke. Well – it is a true story actually. I can’t share some of the details as I still want to live a bit longer.

I went to Iran when I was a teenager. It was just after the election when Mr Ahmadinejad got himself elected. Obviously, there was a revolution after this memorable event which lead a lot of young people go to the streets of Tehran wearing green ribbons to protest. Green was the colour of the opposition and was highly prosecuted. As a result, a lot of people were beaten to death, a lot of people were arrested and who knows what else was happening to the other protestors.

Luckily for me I went there for a competition (some school related stuff) which was quite political there and they had a lot of political events for the contestants. There was one event where they wanted us to have dinner and take pictures with their current minister of foreign affairs which couldn’t really speak English, or maybe – didn’t want to. Either way – an interesting strategy for the international event. That event was quite alright, I gave some interviews for the national press while wearing my favourite green scarf – I couldn’t show my perfect hair there as it would obviously attract too much men attention and this is what the country would not tolerate – fair enough.

The highlight however was the great news announced by the organisers of the competition – “We will be meeting our president tomorrow!!!”. And then they gave us a lecture about the rules that we can’t obey. Especially for girls – like our visit wouldn’t be complicated already. So, the main rule – no hand shaking, no touching Mr Ahmadinejad or any other man. Like I would be dying to shake his hand. Other rules were just general rules for not wearing anything green, having our hair covered and no open skin shown. Well, showing face is OK for foreigners – Mahmoud is an open liberal man.

And guess what. I thought – F**K IT! I won’t be meeting that man who elects himself as a president after killing and torturing thousands of people. However, the rules are a bit more complicated there. I couldn’t just tell one of the organisers that I won’t meet Mahmoud because he’s a bad man that I don’t approve. I mean, of course they would say that it is up to me but the future wouldn’t be as predictable after that. I needed to come up with the plan. I decided to fake a food poisoning. Sounds good, right? I thought so too.

When the day has come and it was the time for my act, I told one of the organisers that I can’t go anywhere as I had a food poisoning. So, they sent me a doctor to check me. The doctor did his thing and told me that he knew I was pretending and that I should be careful. Fortunately for me he was in the opposition and understood my reasons for not meeting Mr President. Or maybe he just said that to me. Either way, I started panicking. It got even worse when they sent one more doctor to analyse the situation. That guy was rude. He closed his eyes and couldn’t open them until I put my scarf on. Then he covered me with some material so that he wouldn’t touch my skin or whatever. And he obviously understood that I was faking everything – didn’t say a word and left.

That was the scariest moment of my life so far. I had no idea what was going to happen. I got no calls, no more visits – nothing. I got a present though – a traditional hand made Iranian art plate from His Excellency. Thanks, Mahmoud, if you are reading this! (Hopefully not). Anyways, after a while, I decided to leave my room and there was a lot of security around and they were “discreetly” following me. Then it got even scarier – one of the organisers who was some guy from the government approached me politely and invited me to his office for a cup of tea. He asked me a lot of questions about what I thought about the country, it’s politics, the president. He wanted to see the pictures I have taken and all the usual stuff. Well, could happen to anyone, right? At the end of the meeting, the guy told me that I would be asked not to come back to the country. Well, I think it’s kind of reasonable – you can’t come back to the country if you fake food poisoning so you wouldn’t need to meet a president.

And after that, I left his office, spent one more day there and flew back to my home country. For the first time in my life, I actually felt safe in my home town. I guess the standards change after experiences like that.

Would I do the same thing again? Absolutely not.

P.S. Regardless of what I said about the politics, Iran is a beautiful country with amazing people and I really enjoyed my time there.

I would like to introduce myself before starting sharing my extremely interesting life stories. Since my life is so interesting, some of you might think that everything is just a consequence of my imagination. Not true – even though my imagination is extraordinary compared to most of the people, I am lucky enough to be able to make people intrigued without using it.

There are several rules that I will have to follow while sharing personal stuff with my readers:

I won’t use any real names in my stories.

If anyone would think that the stories are about you – don’t. (I had quite a few people involved in most of the adventures)

Most of the posts won’t contain any specific information about when it has happened.

I will try to be as specific as possible about my background but won’t be able to share some details to maintain anonymity of me and the others mentioned in here.

It is necessary to share some details about my background before starting digging into some serious stuff.

I am a female millennial living in the United Kingdom, London – to be precise. I was not born in here but I don’t want to share my nationality for now although I can tell that I was born one of the Eastern European countries.

My IQ is over the roof hence my job is extremely demanding and technical. Oh, and I forgot to mention – I have manic episodes sometimes thanks to my genetic bipolar disorder. I try to use it wisely.